Smithsonian.com

Winter (Not So) Wonderland

By
Courtney Jordan

smithsonian.com
January 7, 2008

I hate snow. I’ll admit that it makes everything look crystal clean, but it is a nuisance. It is like a nightmare guest. It arrives unannounced, imposes itself forcefully into your daily life without any by your leave and then makes trouble for its entire stay. Plus it is just beastly to drive in.The best way to appreciate snow is when it is trapped, contained in a snow globe. And not just any tchotchke snow globe that you might get from your out-of-touch auntie. It should be a Martin & Muñoz snow globe.
Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz have been collaborating for more than a decade, creating arresting and unsettling miniature sculpture groupings and situating them in glass snow globes. From a Naga luring a package-carrying boy into a tree or a couple embracing—or struggling—on a snowy cliff, the scenes captured and encased by this husband and wife team are unorthodox and disturbing, but there’s something equally wondrous about them. It must be the snow.